RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil (AP) - Thousands of police swarmed into slums across Rio de Janeiro state Friday, cracking down on the drug trade in the largely lawless zones, officials said. The operation came after violence between rival factions in the drug trade left 17 people dead last weekend, but police denied the operation was motivated by that fighting. A police spokeswoman said the operation, ordered by state police chief Col. Wilton Ribeiro, would continue indefinitely in the slums, known as favelas. [continues 149 words]
RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil -- An escalating drug war has left 17 people dead in the past three days, including four men shot to death Monday in a slum near the capital, police said. The four were believed to have links to drug traffickers in the slum known as Juca's Hole, said police in Niteroi, across Guanabara Bay from Rio de Janeiro. On Sunday, police found 13 bodies in a parked minivan in the Vila da Penha district on Rio's poor north side. The eight men and five women were shot and stabbed to death in what police said was a vendetta between rival drug gangs. Police believe the victims died late Saturday or early Sunday. [continues 272 words]
RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil - An escalating drug war has left 17 people dead in the past three days, including four men shot to death Monday in a slum near the capital, police said. The four were believed to have links to drug traffickers in the slum known as Juca's Hole, said police in Niteroi, across Guanabara Bay from Rio de Janeiro. On Sunday, police found 13 bodies in a parked minivan in the Vila da Penha district on Rio's poor north side. The eight men and five women were shot and stabbed to death in what police said was a vendetta between rival drug gangs. Police believe the victims died late Saturday or early Sunday. [continues 271 words]
SAO PAULO, Brazil, July 10 (Reuters) - Brazilian police arrested two Paraguayans caught smuggling 100 kilos (221 pounds) of marijuana into the country on bicycles, a common occurrence in the southwest region, police said on Tuesday. The 18- and 24-year-old were arrested on Monday as they cycled to the city of Dourados 120 kilometers (75 miles) inside Brazil after sneaking over the border cross-country near the Paraguayan city of Pedro Juan Caballero, a major marijuana trafficking route. "They do the run at night and sleep hidden in jungle during the day," said Dourados police chief Elasaro Moreira da Silva. [continues 97 words]
RIO DE JANEIRO - There is a deadly new drug problem in Latin America's largest country: cocaine consumption. Brazil once was mainly a transit point for cocaine from Colombia, Bolivia and Peru bound for the United States and Europe. But today, Brazil has become one of the world's largest markets for illicit drugs, particularly cocaine. That has changed an important dynamic in the drug war: a belief in Latin America that U.S. demand alone has fueled the vast illegal-drug industry. [continues 730 words]
Once a Transit Point, Country Is Now a Big Consumer There is a deadly new drug problem in Latin America's largest country: cocaine consumption. Brazil, a sprawling country of 170 million, once was mainly a transit point for cocaine smuggled from Colombia, Bolivia and Peru and bound for the United States and Europe. But today, Brazil has become one of the world's largest markets for illicit drugs, particularly cocaine. The sharp increase in Brazilian consumption has changed an important dynamic in the drug war: a belief in Latin America that U.S. demand alone has fueled the vast illegal drug industry in countries where coca leaves are grown and transformed into cocaine and from which the drugs are smuggled north. [continues 390 words]
CUBATAO, Brazil, June 26 (Reuters) - Brazil on Tuesday incinerated what it claims is the biggest batch of dope ever torched, vying for a place in the Guinness Book of Records and highlighting its drug fight on its national anti-drug day. Guarded by 300 police agents in 25 vehicles and helicopters buzzing overhead, a convoy of seven trucks carried the stash 652 miles (1050 kilometers) from Brazil's southwestern state of Mato Grosso do Sul to Sao Paulo state for destruction. [continues 307 words]
Complexo da Mare, sprawling over the flatlands behind Rio's sparkling Guanabara Bay, has long been a desolate place. Over the years, hundreds of thousands of poor people have flocked to the slum in search of work and a better life. Few found either and, packed into shanties, many of the most desperate residents turned to crime to make a living. But in the past two years, Mare and other favelas--collectively home to 17 percent of Rio's citizens--have become killing fields. Teenagers armed with AK-47s, AR-15s, Walthers, Uzis, hand grenades, even rocket launchers, shoot it out night after night, destroying homes and shops and killing civilians. What has made a tough neighborhood almost maniacally violent? [continues 2089 words]
BRASILIA, Brazil--Brazil's most powerful drug lord, Luiz Fernando da Costa, arrived here Wednesday, five days after he was captured in Colombia. Da Costa arrived in Brasilia aboard a Brazilian air force plane and was taken to police headquarters. Da Costa, with one arm in a sling tucked under a bulletproof vest, was briefly shown to reporters at the headquarters, his first public appearance in Brazil in five years. Da Costa is accused of buying tons of cocaine from the rebel group Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, paying about $10 million a month. He also faces homicide charges in Brazil. [end]
BRASILIA, Brazil (Reuters) - Brazil's most powerful drug lord arrived under heavy police guard in the country's capital on Wednesday, five days after his capture in Colombia for alleged arms and drug links with leftist rebels. Luiz Fernando da Costa, 33, left Bogota in the middle of the night aboard a Brazilian Air Force plane for Brasilia, where he was bundled into a vehicle and taken to Federal Police headquarters in a four-car motorcade with a helicopter flying overhead. [continues 342 words]
Peru Shoot-Down Policy Of Drug Flights Tainted By Revelations Of Bribes, Futility RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil -- The Peruvian air force's downing of a single-engine Cessna airplane, which killed an American missionary and her infant daughter, is simply the latest chapter in a troubled story of the CIA's tangled connections to Peru's armed forces. The Clinton administration called the Andean nation's 120,000-man armed forces a vital partner in U.S. anti-narcotics efforts, thanks in large measure to an aggressive shoot-down policy that has wiped out at least 30 small aircraft operated by suspected drug traffickers. Production of coca, the raw material used to make cocaine, also dropped sharply. [continues 574 words]
BRASILIA, Brazil (Reuters) - President Bush (news - web sites) is hoping to meet with the leaders of Colombia's neighbors at a summit in Quebec this week in a bid to win regional involvement for Bogota's U.S.-backed war on drugs, Brazil's foreign minister said. Brazil's foreign minister Celso Lafer told foreign correspondents late on Monday, "my perception is that the Bush government wants to examine Plan Colombia within a vision of regionalization." Colombia's neighbors Venezuela, Panama, Brazil, Ecuador and Peru are suffering from the impact of Bogota's "Plan Colombia" offensive against cocaine to which the U.S. is giving more than $1 billion in mainly military aid. [continues 193 words]
Crime: Before Fleeing Into The Jungle, Boss Showed Entrepreneurial Vision, Cunning--And Cruelty. RIO DE JANEIRO--Weakened by bullet wounds, his empire crumbling, Luiz Fernando da Costa has spent weeks fleeing a military strike force in the jungles of eastern Colombia. But the Brazilian drug lord, nicknamed Fernandinho Beira Mar (Freddy Seashore) for the coastal slum near Rio where he was born, is still dangerous. During the years when he became a new breed of crime boss, forging an unprecedented alliance with Colombian guerrillas, the only weapon Da Costa needed was a telephone. He allegedly used just that to supervise the torture-slaying here of a young man who had a romance with one of the drug lord's girlfriends. [continues 1336 words]
RIO DE JANEIRO, March 3 -- The capture in Colombia of the chief lieutenant and a common-law wife of Brazil's most notorious drug trafficker has exposed what authorities are describing as a flourishing guns-for-cocaine network run with Colombia's rebels. The two, Ney Machado and Jacqueline Alcantara de Morais, were apprehended with four other Brazilians in a counternarcotics operation that the Colombian military began on Feb. 11 in the province of Guainia, which borders Brazil and is a stronghold of the rebel group called the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC. Both are wanted in Brazil on drug-trafficking charges, and the Brazilian government has asked for their extradition. [continues 636 words]
Town Finds Itself On Front Lines TABATINGA, Brazil - The battered minibus lurches over the last speed bump and hurtles down the Avenue of Friendship, past a perpetually closed blue-and-white border post, around a curve and out of Brazil. Suddenly, the sun-baked concrete gives way to shady streets lined with palmettos and red-flowered poincianas. Shop signs are in Spanish instead of Portuguese, a new set of mayoral candidates stares from billboards, and the bars tout Aguila beer instead of Antarctica. [continues 1060 words]
SAO PAULO, Brazil - The Congress is accusing judges, lawmakers, Paraguayan Gen. Lino Oviedo and 826 other persons of drug trafficking and involvement in organized crime. After a 20-month investigation, the Parliamentary Commission for Investigations (CPI), a branch of Brazil's Congress, concluded that federal and state representatives, six judges, ex-governors, mayors, military and civilian police officers, and businessmen from 17 of Brazil's 26 states were part of crime organizations. All are accused of being involved in homicides, money laundering, corruption, tax evasion and perjury. [continues 300 words]
Three congressmen, 12 state deputies and three mayors were named last week in a list of more than 800 people allegedly involved in organised crime and drugs trafficking in Brazil. The list, part of the final report of an 18-month parliamentary inquiry into the drugs trade, includes policemen, lawyers, businesspeople and farmers in 17 of the 27 states. The inquiry was the most probing look yet into drug trafficking in Brazil, worth more than UKP 15bn. "It's a massive indictment of all sections of Brazilian society. It touches almost every part," said David Fleischer, professor of politics at Brasilia University. "It shows us that organised crime and money-laundering is a very sophisticated network, much more sophisticated than we thought." The investigators will hand the 5,000-page report to prosecutors and judges, who are expected to start legal proceedings against the accused. [continues 96 words]
TABATINGA, Brazil (AP) -- The battered minibus lurches over the last speed bump and hurtles down the Avenue of Friendship, past a perpetually closed blue-and-white border post, around a curve and out of Brazil. Suddenly the sun-baked concrete gives way to shady streets lined with palmettos and flamboyants. Shop signs are in Spanish instead of Portuguese, a new set of mayoral candidates stare from billboards, and the bars tout Aguila beer instead of Antarctica. Welcome to Leticia, Colombia. No passport, no visa, no border check. No questions. [continues 1056 words]
Report Accuses Hundreds Of Involvement, Including High-Level Politicians RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil -- The longest investigation into narcotics trafficking ever carried out in Brazil has found that drug-related corruption has become so common that the country cannot mount an effective attack against the problem. A 1,198-page report was released last week by a legislative commission that spent 14 months investigating organized drug crimes. It accused 824 people of offenses ranging from drug running to arms trafficking to tax evasion. [continues 652 words]
A parliamentary report released last week accuses more than 800 officials at all levels of organized crimes. RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL -- The longest and most detailed investigation into narcotics trafficking and organized crime ever carried out in Brazil has found that drug-related corruption and money laundering have become so widespread that the country is unable to properly fight the problem. An unprecedented inquiry carried out by a commission of lawmakers with wide-reaching powers spent more than a year investigating organized crime. Their damning report named 824 people it accuses of crimes ranging from drug trafficking to gun running to tax evasion. [continues 685 words]
A congressional commission in Brazil investigating drug-trafficking has approved its final report, recommending that more than eight-hundred people, including politicians, police officers and business leaders, be indicted. The commission worked for fourteen months, uncovering a network of criminals who use Brazil as a transit point for smuggling drugs from neighbouring Colombia, Bolivia and Peru to the United States and Europe. The report will now go to the public prosecutor's office. But correspondents say the challenges of bringing anyone to trial are huge. For example, three of the politicians named have parliamentary immunity from prosecution. From the newsroom of the BBC World Service [end]
Free-trade Rules Permit Shipments Of 'Precursors' MANAUS, Brazil -- Although the Clinton administration has declared a risky and controversial $1.3 billion war against Latin America's cocaine trade, it isn't fighting on what may be the easiest and most promising front. While the administration is providing massive military and other aid to help Colombia and other Andean nations stop coca growing, processing and trafficking, experts say the chemicals needed to refine cocaine from coca leaves continue to flow unhindered to drug labs. Each country involved blames another for the problem. [continues 762 words]
A probe into organized crime and drug trafficking released Thursday by the Brazilian Congress implicated nearly 200 public officials, including at least 10 national and state congressmen and an array of policemen, judges, mayors and city councilmen. The congressional committee that directed the inquiry recommended that 75 police officials be investigated for crimes ranging from extortion to drug trafficking. Ultimately, the report implicated more police than drug dealers. The 5,000-page report is the culmination of an investigation, begun in April 1999, that has gripped this nation of 170 million people for months. The inquiry marked the first time Congress has taken such a long and detailed look into the country's $25 billion drug-trafficking trade. [continues 241 words]
A yearlong congressional inquiry into drug trafficking and money laundering has concluded with a report calling for the indictment of some 300 people and an overhaul of government counter-narcotics policies. Most of those named in the document are reputed drug dealers, but the investigating committee also recommended that charges be filed against 75 police officials, 30 judges, 25 businessmen and 30 elected officials, ranging from members of Congress to mayors. [end]
RIO DE JANEIRO, Nov. 30 - A probe into organized crime and drug trafficking released today by the Brazilian Congress implicated nearly 200 officials, including at least 10 members of national and state congresses and an array of police officers, judges, mayors and city council members. The congressional committee directing the inquiry recommended that 75 police officials be investigated for crimes ranging from extortion to drug trafficking. Ultimately, the report implicated more police officers than drug dealers. The 5,000-page report was the culmination of an investigation, begun in April 1999, that has gripped this country of 170 million people for months. The inquiry marked the first time that the Congress has taken such a long and detailed look into Brazil's $25 billion drug-trafficking trade. [continues 407 words]
CAMPINAS, Brazil - The woman gently touched Joao Herbert's forearm as he stepped off the crowded sidewalk and into an appliance store. "Aren't you the boy who just arrived here from America?" asked Maria Leonar Vieira de Moraes, 60. Herbert smiled and nodded yes. "Welcome to your home," she said. Then she reached up and hugged him. Hers was an oft-expressed sentiment during Herbert's first week here. But it masked the brutal, if sometimes poignant, complexities of the 22-year-old's arrival in a homeland that is as alien to him as landing on the moon. [continues 1522 words]
CAMPINAS, Brazil - The unfamiliar faces smile at him on the subway. Total strangers flash him the thumbs-up sign and wish him good luck. People he has never met offer him a job. For Joao Herbert, deported from the United States to a homeland he barely recalls, the warmth, of Brazilians is a welcome surprise - and helps to case the anger and hurt that won't go away. "I have been very fortunate since my arrival. People have opened their doors and hearts to, me in a way I could never have expected," he said. [continues 608 words]
CAMPINAS, Brazil - The woman gently touched Joao Herbert's forearm as he stepped off the crowded sidewalk and into an appliance store. "Aren't you the boy who just arrived here from America?" asked Maria Leonar Vieira de Moraes, 60. Herbert smiled and nodded yes. "Welcome to your home," she said. Then she reached up and hugged him. Hers was an oft-expressed sentiment during Herbert's first week here. But it masked the brutal, if sometimes poignant, complexities of the 22-year-old's arrival in a homeland that is as alien to him as landing on the moon. [continues 1618 words]
`Precursors' Used In Latin American Labs MANAUS, Brazil --Although the Clinton administration has declared a risky and controversial $1.3 billion war against Latin America's cocaine trade, it isn't fighting on what may be the easiest and most promising front. The administration is providing massive military and other aid to help Colombia and other Andean nations stop coca growing, processing and trafficking, but experts say the chemicals, or ``precursors,'' needed to refine cocaine from coca leaves continue to flow unhindered to drug labs. Each country involved blames another for the problem. [continues 757 words]
Refining Process Requires Large Shipments That Can Be Tracked MANAUS, Brazil -- Although the Clinton administration has declared a risky $1.3 billion war against Latin America's cocaine trade, it isn't fighting on what may be the easiest and most promising front. The administration is providing massive military and other aid to help Colombia and other Andean nations stop coca growing, processing and trafficking, but experts say the chemicals needed to refine cocaine from coca leaves continue to flow unhindered to drug labs. Each country involved blames another for the problem. [continues 1091 words]
Brazilian'S Treatment Reflects Strict Laws Against Drug Trafficking, Inflexible Rules SAO PAULO, Brazil -- Among the men with weather-beaten faces who lined the peach-colored walls of the Arsenal da Esperanca shelter, waiting in the Friday afternoon sun for a free dinner and a bunk, was a frightened 22-year-old from Ohio. Many of the men are alcoholics, jobless or both. All of them are homeless. Joao Herbert had been deported to Brazil a day earlier by the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) because he was caught selling a small amount of marijuana before his application to become an American citizen was processed. [continues 613 words]
Violence Abates As Drug Dealers Abide By Rules RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil -- A couple of months ago, police Maj. Antonio Carlos Carballo would never have ventured alone into the back alleys and concealed courtyards of the Cantagalo slum. The area, which sits on the side of a hill that rises above the city, was simply too dangerous for police officers. Cocaine and marijuana traffickers controlled who went where, and their lieutenants, young men armed with semiautomatic weapons, stalked the narrow alleys, handing out packets of drugs to child couriers and stern warnings to anyone stupid enough to get in their way. [continues 1077 words]
TABATINGA, Brazil -- Until recently, this town sitting on the corner of the frontiers of Brazil, Peru and Colombia was one of the most sleepy, remote and overlooked parts of the Amazon. But that was before the fighting upriver among army troops, guerrillas and paramilitary forces on Colombia's side of a largely unmarked, 1,021-mile border started to intensify. Suddenly, the Brazilian government is stepping up river patrols and air surveillance and destroying clandestine airstrips, driven by a concern that the $1.3 billion the United States has promised Colombia to bolster its army may further fuel the long war against drug traffickers and their guerrilla allies and send it spilling into Brazil. [continues 1037 words]
TABATINGA, Brazil - Until recently, this town on the corner of the frontiers of Brazil, Peru and Colombia was one of the most sleepy, remote and overlooked parts of the Amazon. But that was before the fighting upriver by army troops, guerrillas and paramilitary forces on Colombia's side of the 1,021-mile border started to intensify. Suddenly, the Brazilian government is stepping up river patrols and air surveillance and destroying clandestine airstrips, driven by a concern that the $1.3 billion the United States has promised Colombia to bolster its army may further fuel the long war against drug traffickers and their guerrilla allies and send it spilling into Brazil. [continues 1579 words]
MANAUS, Brazil (AP) -- Explosions rocked the morning stillness, and pink smoke billowed over the beachhead on the Amazon tributary. Brazilian marines in black swooped down from helicopters and stormed up the sand, machine guns crackling. On a bluff above, military officers nodded their approval. If the Amazon ever is invaded, said a voice over a loudspeaker, Brazil will be ready. The show last week was for the benefit of defense ministers from around the Americas who met in this Amazon jungle city. As nations in the region debate the impact on them of Colombia's massive anti-drug plan, war games have taken on a new edge. [continues 384 words]
Defense Ministers Fear The Battle Against Traffickers May Spill Over MANAUS, Brazil -- U.S. Defense Secretary William Cohen promised Latin American defense ministers Tuesday that Colombia's expanding drug war would not prove to be another quagmire like Vietnam. But in interviews, defense leaders from countries bordering Colombia said they feared that they would suffer escalating cross-border movements of Colombian drug traffickers and the guerrillas that thrive on protecting them. Speaking to a summit of 30 defense ministers from Western Hemisphere countries, Cohen stressed that Plan Colombia, a $7.5 billion international anti-drug effort that includes $1.3 billion in U.S. military aid to Colombia this year, is essentially a training and equipping mission. It is not, he insisted, the first stage of an eventual U.S. military intervention. [continues 549 words]
MANAUS, Brazil - The United States has rebuked South America for failing to support Colombia's planned military offensive against drug producers, amid fears that the conflict will spill over the border. In a private meeting Wednesday with defense ministers from the region, U.S. Deputy Undersecretary of Defense James Bodner said the U.S.-backed Plan Colombia would go ahead with or without their support. "He complained about the lack of solidarity by South America, and he laid it on heavy," said Rep. Joao Herrmann Neto of Brazil's House Foreign Relations Committee, who attended the meeting. [continues 317 words]
Colombian Rebels Pushing Into Neighboring Countries MANAUS, Brazil - With Colombian guerrillas and drug traffickers threatening to destabilize the entire region, Western Hemisphere defense ministers gathered in northern Brazil this week to discuss the possibility of a more coordinated military response. But to the apparent chagrin of U.S. and Colombian officials, few of the ministers actually want to address the main problem: At Colombia's borders, leftist rebels are expanding their operations into neighboring countries and prompting one of the most massive military mobilizations the region has seen in decades. [continues 1424 words]
They were told that a U.S. role would be limited and that the conflict would not become another Vietnam. MANAUS, Brazil - U.S. Defense Secretary William S. Cohen promised Latin American defense ministers yesterday that Colombia's expanding drug war would not prove to be another quagmire like Vietnam. But in interviews, defense leaders from countries bordering Colombia said they feared they would suffer escalating cross-border movements of Colombian drug traffickers and the guerrillas that thrive on protecting them. [continues 548 words]
President Fernando Henrique Cardoso of Brazil has opened a meeting of defence ministers from the Americas warning that the war against drugs in Colombia should be carried out through democratic means. Mr Cardoso's comments were made in the Amazonian city of Manaus, where the US Defence Secretary William Cohen has been trying to gather Latin American support for Plan Colombia, a US-backed attempt to fight the drugs trade. This meeting of more than 20 defence ministers from throughout the Americas is taking place in a hotel on the banks of the Negro River in Brazil's Amazon jungle. [continues 201 words]
Latin American Defense Ministers Fear Escalation Of The Drug War. MANAUS, Brazil -- U.S. Defense Secretary William Cohen promised Latin American defense ministers Tuesday that Colombia's expanding drug war will not become a Vietnam-like quagmire. But in interviews, defense leaders from countries bordering Colombia said they fear they will suffer escalating cross-border movements of Colombian drug traffickers and the guerrillas that thrive on protecting them. Addressing 30 Western Hemisphere defense ministers, Cohen stressed that Plan Colombia, an international anti-drug effort that includes $1.3 billion in U.S. military aid, is essentially a training and equipping mission. It is not, he insisted, the first stage of a U.S. military intervention. [continues 349 words]
MANAUS, Brazil -- Defense ministers from throughout the Western Hemisphere assembled in the heart of the Amazon yesterday to begin four days of meetings aimed at strengthening military and security cooperation in the region. But the formal agenda of the meeting in Manaus was overshadowed by the deepening conflict in Colombia and the increased American commitment there. Leaders continued to express reservations about being drawn into the conflict in any way. Both the U.S. secretary of defense, William Cohen, and his Colombian counterpart, Luis Fernando Ramrez Acuna, were on hand to allay concerns generated by the Clinton administration's recent decision to provide $1.3 billion in emergency aid, most of it in military assistance, to the Colombian government. [continues 354 words]
Brazil Wants Security Assurances Over Colombian Drugs Defence ministers from across the Americas are at a biennial summit in Brazil aimed at bringing about better co-operation particularly in relation to drugs in the region. Some 25 ministers, including the US Defence Secretary William Cohen are to attend meetings which have been spread over three days. Mr Cohen, who is pre-occupied with the apparent bombing attack against a US warship in Yemen and the crisis in the Middle East, will only spend a day at the summit in the north Brazilian city of Manaus, returning to Washington on Tuesday night. [continues 134 words]
TABATINGA, Brazil ญญ By 9 a.m. on most weekdays, the border here is thick with traffic as Brazilians and Colombians stroll and drive unencumbered across the frontier to shop, work and attend school. But such free passage has also had a bitter downside for residents of this steamy city: an illicit cross-border drug trade. Now, with Colombia's renewed determination to strangle drug trafficking and end a four-decade-old civil war, Brazil is fortifying the 1,000-mile frontier to bring relief to such cities as Tabatinga and to avoid spillover from the Colombian campaign. Brazilian officials say they fear Colombia's efforts could produce a swell of refugees and bring more drug use and manufacturing and arms trafficking to Brazilian soil. The government also says it fears that Plan Colombia--backed by $1.3 billion from the United States--could, at some point, draw American soldiers to the border region. [continues 703 words]
The United States is zeroing in on drug trafficking in areas bordering with Brazil. After launching Plan Colombia early this month, the Americans have decided to follow an identical strategy regarding Paraguay. During visits to three Paraguayan Army bases located close to the Brazilian border, US Ambassador to Paraguay David Greenlee said that the fight on drug trafficking is a challenge that his country intends to face. Garments, equipment, and information services are already being lined up to fight the drug and arms trade on the border. "Paraguay is a transit country. It needs attention," he said. [continues 696 words]
BRASILIA, Sept. 1. South America's 12 heads of state endorsed Colombia's peace process today but stopped short of unconditional support for its U.S.-backed plan to combat drug trafficking and end a four-decade-old civil war. In a statement at the end of a two-day summit conference, the heads of state offered qualified support of the $7.5 billion Plan Colombia, which combines military efforts and social and economic development to fight drug trafficking and production. The United States is contributing $1.3 billion, most of it for military equipment and training. [continues 370 words]
COLOMBIA: South American governments expressed "serious concern" in Brasilia yesterday at a $1.3 billion US military aid package for Colombia, at an event originally called to accelerate trade integration but dominated by Colombia's escalating internal conflict. The Brazil summit, attended by all South American presidents, rejected plans for a multinational military force that would intervene in Colombia. "Brazil will not participate in any such international force," said Foreign Minister Mr Luiz Felipe Lampreia, in comments published yesterday, "What's more, Brazil stands firmly against the idea of any foreign military force in Colombia." [continues 297 words]
South American leaders opened their first regional summit Thursday in Brazil, amid concerns of a possible spillover from Colombia's anti-drug offensive and of U.S. military involvement in the fight. Colombian President Andres Pastrana quickly reassured the 11 other leaders that his anti-drug campaign -- known as Plan Colombia -- will not lead to American military intervention. The two-day summit was convened by Brazilian President Fernando Henrique Cardoso in Brasilia to discuss integrating the region's economies, strengthening its democratic institutions and improving education and technology. But the consequences of Colombia's drug war was becoming a major focus of the meeting, which got under way one day after President Clinton visited Colombia to lend support and release $1.3 billion in military aid to the counternarcotics program. [end]
Leaders Fear Action From U.S. Military BRASILIA, Brazil -- South American leaders yesterday opened their first regional summit amid concerns of a possible spillover from Colombia's anti-drug offensive and of U.S. military involvement in the fight. Colombian President Andres Pastrana quickly reassured the 11 other leaders that his anti-drug campaign -- known as Plan Colombia -- will not lead to American military intervention. "I am the President of Colombia. There will not be a military intervention," he said. "The world should understand that drug trafficking is the common enemy." [continues 392 words]
Inside Brazil
